[Distutils] from distutils.core import DistutilsOptionError

[P.J. Eby]

At 05:32 PM 2/23/2010 -0500, Tarek Ziadé wrote:
>2/ the work done in 2.7 so far was following the usual deprecation
>process for relocated
>APIs or removed APIs, but nothing for misplaced import statements. We
>did discuss this in the past and said it was fine this way.

Btw, imports from distutils.core *are* API; its docstring describes 
it as "The only module that needs to be imported to use the 
Distutils".  It's supposed to be a one-stop shop for importing common 
things needed by setup scripts, including the errors, Extension, 
Command, Distribution, etc.

So, the unused imports in distutils.core are not "misplaced import 
statements", nor is there a good reason (AFAICT) for changing the API 
to require the average setup script author to remember which module 
to import things from.  There should be only one obvious way to do 
it, and right now, the one obvious way to import things in a setup 
script is from distutils.core.